title	abstract	author	date	link-citations	csl	toc	lof	nocite	titlepage	titlepage-rule-color	header-left	toc-own-page	titlepage-logo	logo-width
On the role of the Community Manager in the Sovereign Cloud Stack project	Sovereign Cloud Stack (SCS) is a network of existing and future providers of standardized sovereign cloud and container infrastructure to join forces in defining, implementing and operating a fully open, federated, compatible platform. A growing community of organizations and individuals contribute to the joint mission of this open-source project. This document describes the upstream community we're striving for and how the dedicated role of a community manager can significantly contribute to this goal.	Eduard Itrich Kurt Garloff	\today	true	ieee.csl	true	true	@*	true	50c3a5	On the role of the Community Manager	true	images/scs.pdf	100mm

Preface

Sovereign Cloud Stack (SCS) is a network of existing and future providers of standardized sovereign cloud and container infrastructure to join forces in defining, implementing and operating a fully open, federated, compatible platform. By joining forces, the platform can support a healthy ecosystem for service and application developers and strengthen the digitalization efforts in Europe without creating large risks to lose control over the technology and the data. Since July 2021, SCS has been granted funding from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action and is hosted by the Open Source Business Alliance e.V. (OSBA).

A community of employees from participating and interested companies are regularly contributing towards the joint mission of SCS. Additionally, the OSBA is building a team that manages and coordinates standardization, software integration and the development of this network.

This document describes the upstream community we're striving for and how the dedicated role of a community manager can significantly contribute to this goal. The community manager of SCS takes responsibility to foster a thriving upstream community and empowers as well as motivates individuals to (technically) contribute to the project.

The community and culture we're striving for

The SCS project is striving for a self-organized and motivated upstream community, that can contribute to the project without being blocked or having to ask for permission. All our actions are aligned to the fundamental principle of people over processes over tools [@PPT].

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We're aiming to build a culture that is welcoming, respectful, and adheres to the project's code of conduct [@CoC]. Our community is believing in the joint vision to build a federated, compatible platform and is eager to contribute to this mission. Every contribution – be it technical or non-technical – has an impact and makes a difference. Thus, we're promoting self-efficacy and encourage veterans as well as newcomers to engage in the community's activities.

Mission statement of the community manager

The prime responsibility of the community manager in the SCS project is to create an environment that...

1. keeps people interested,
2. keeps people informed,
3. keeps people involved, and
4. keeps people inspired.

By helping community members, providing the proper processes and last but not least the needed tools, the barrier to contribute to the project is significantly lowered.

Keeping in sync with an active community can be challenging. By providing points of entry for every level of expertise and time budget, the community is kept involved and informed. Synchronous presence in the community meetings should not be mandatory to engage. All discussions and conclusions are made fully transparent and proper processes allow to contribute to SCS without having the fear of missing out¹.

Tasks and Responsibilities

Communication

• Community Digest: Highlighting interesting topics and events in a structured, reoccurring newsletter for the entire community.
• Contributor's Journal: Highlighting call-to-actions and contribution opportunities in a structured, reoccurring newsletter for the tech community.
• Website: Lead for the scs.community website, including design and content. Encouraging the community to publish blog postings and streamlining this process.
• Social Media: Managing the LinkedIn, Twitter, Fosstodon and YouTube profiles of the project.
• Cross-Community Engagement: Keeping connected and engaged with various related communities.
  • Open Infrastructure Foundation
  • Gaia-X Federation Services
  • Gaia-X Open Source Community
  • OSS Review Toolkit Community
  • CNCF

Organization

• Taking responsibility for our contributors' toolset.
  • Mailing list management (https://scs.sovereignit.de/mailman3/postorius/lists/)
  • Management of GitHub organization (https://github.com/SovereignCloudStack)
  • github-manager (https://github.com/SovereignCloudStack/github-manager)
  • Community calendar (https://github.com/SovereignCloudStack/calendar)
  • Management of Matrix community space (https://matrix.to/#/#scs-community:matrix.org)
  • UCS instance, hosting various services: Nextcloud, Mailman3 and Wekan
• Lead for organization of contributors' meetups, e.g. Hackathons or side-tracks during relevant conferences.
• Taking responsibility to define the SCS brand.

Orchestration

• Coordination of the Special Interest Group (SIG) Community.
• Participation in:
  • Team Container, IaaS, Ops&IAM
  • SIG Documentation, SIG Market, SIG Standardization
  • Open Operations meetups
• On-boarding of new contributors to the community and the various tools we use.
• Orchestration of the community mentorship program.

Miscellaneous

• Regular participation in the Taskforce Communication of the Open Source Business Alliance.
• End-device management for the project team using Apple Business and Relution.
• Management of project team's PBX using Telekom Magenta CloudPBX 2.0.
• Management of the dedicated Matomo instance for SCS

Bibliography

Footnotes

1. Fear of missing out (FOMO) is the feeling of apprehension that one is either not in the know or missing out on information, events, or experiences. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out. ↩